Deadly Mt. Everest blizzard had sleet and thundersnow
Over 900 hikers were rescued after they were stranded during a blizzard with heavy sleet, snow, thunder and lightning at 16,400 feet in elevation.
Mountaineers and mountain guides are out and about on Mount Everest on May 21, 2024. (Photo by Narendra Shahi Thakuri/picture alliance via Getty Images)
At least 900 Mt. Everest trekkers had to be rescued on Oct. 5 after they were stranded during a blizzard with heavy sleet, snow, thunder and lightning at 16,400 feet in elevation.
The heavy sleet and snow collapsed tents and covered trails. Hikers had to use cooking pots to dig out. At least one person was killed at nearby Mera Peak in Nepal Saturday.
More than 3 feet of snow fell, confirmed by a hiker who estimated the snow "up to their thighs," according to NBC News.
That amount would be three times the average weekly snowfall for early October. Tom Matthews, a climate scientist at King's College London, told Scientific American the snowstorm was more than three times greater than anything measured on the mountain -- but records only exist for the last six years.
A large stone with "Everest Base Camp" graffiti marks the beginning of the famous trekking camp on Oct. 13, 2024 in Nepal. (Mailee Osten-Tan/Getty Images)
"There was a western disturbance and also a deep depression over the northwest Bay of Bengal that lifted toward Nepal from Oct. 3-5," AccuWeather's Lead International Forecaster Jason Nicholls explained.
"At the same time, Cyclonic Storm Shakhti was forming in the Arabian Sea, and the combination of these three features likely helped funnel moist air northward into northern India and Nepal to form the blizzard," Nicholls said.
October is part of the busy season after the yearly monsoon retreats and weather normally dries out. The blizzard happened as part of a larger weather system including floods and landslides in Nepal and northeast India that killed 70 people.
The news of the Everest rescue took days to transmit because communication lines were also cut by the heavy rain and snow, the BBC reported.
The BBC says climate change is leading to more extreme rainfall at the tail end of the monsoon season in India, which meteorologists used to say ended in September. This year, and for the last decade, the rainy season has lingered into October.
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